


Something Unexpected

by ead13



Category: Dragon Age: Origins
Genre: F/M, The Pearl (Dragon Age), defining relationships, friends with benefits isn't working, jealous Tabris, past Zevran/Isabela, proposed threesome, why did we bring poor Alistair to the brothel?
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-17
Updated: 2018-09-17
Packaged: 2019-07-13 08:41:08
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,879
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16014338
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ead13/pseuds/ead13
Summary: Kallian just wants to learn how to be a duelist, and Zevran claims he knows the best. However, it turns out he and this extremely sexy pirate have a history, and suddenly Kallian's casual arrangement with Zevran isn't enough anymore.





	Something Unexpected

**Author's Note:**

  * For [keita52](https://archiveofourown.org/users/keita52/gifts).



The Pearl was busy considering it wasn’t even all that late. Clearly its reputation was everything that Kallian had heard if the nobles were coming out in daylight hours to get their fix, unafraid of being seen. She knew plenty of girls, and even some boys from her days in the Alienage that had worked there, though she usually tried to tune them out whenever they described their work. In their eyes, working at a brothel was far better than being raped with no compensation, and they claimed The Pearl got plenty of customers who wished to engage in sex with more exotic partners. The proprietress, Sanga, made sure none of her clients got too rough, the place was clean and comfortable, and the price was right. Their impoverished families really couldn’t complain even if the thought of their child or sibling selling themselves out to any number of human pricks ate at them.

Kallian had her mother’s feisty blood; she would still rather go hungry than allow such people to so much as touch her. Accordingly, even though they were entering the establishment purely for business, her skin crawled. Out of the corner of her eye, she noticed Alistair looked visibly uncomfortable. Bless his sweet, innocent soul, she regretted taking him into this place. Should have brought Sten, that would have been more amusing for the patrons’ reactions alone. The dog was more interested in the smell of roast meats up at the bar, the stump of his tail wagging furiously. As for Zevran…

Her stomach turned, and she wasn’t sure why. Zevran was looking around appreciatively at the fine men and women available, studying them from head to toe with a glimmer in his eye. Was he planning on having some fun while she hunted down this Isabella for training? The thought hurt, but she had no right to be upset. She and Zevran had slept together several times, but they had decided it was just for pure enjoyment, nothing more. She had no claim on the dashing Antivan assassin, and she figured she never could. He grew up in a whorehouse, the son of one of the prostitutes; what did he know of love and committed relationships? Being sold to the Crows hardly helped his concept either. He was insatiable, clearly, if he was looking at prospective partners even after they had just shared a bedroll the night before. Perhaps if she were able to please him more…

She bit her lip just short of drawing blood. Let him do what he wanted as long as he would still bring her pleasure when she needed it, right? Having someone who was as talented in bed as any of these professionals at her beck and call should be enough. She was probably going to get killed by darkspawn anyways, so what was the point? What mattered now was that she had a pirate to locate.

Luckily, that wasn’t so difficult. The woman they were looking for was currently beating the tar out of a group of men in the back corner of the bar. This didn’t even seem to faze the proprietress, who simply continued to serve drinks and answer questions by prospective clients. As she fought, simply and efficiently, Kallian could understand why Zevran had recommended her for training as a duelist. The group politely waited until the last man hit the floor and Isabela reclined back in her seat, letting the short armor ride up her smooth, bronze thighs. Her eyes alighted to Zevran, and she grinned widely at the sight as if she had expected him to appear all along. “Zevran, what a pleasure to see you again! Can’t stay away, can you?”

“Like ships in the night, I suppose,” he winked, stepping forward. He took her hand, and pressed his lips to it. Jealousy instantly ignited within Kallian at the sight of those soft lips on someone else’s skin even though it was an innocent enough gesture.

“But shame on me, I shouldn’t just assume this is about pleasure, should I my sweetness?” she continued, now crossing her leg so very little was left to the imagination. 

“I had planned on business, but now that you mention it, pleasure might save me some money tonight.” The purr in his voice made her want to be sick.

She was apparently not the only one. “I, uh, I mean, the dog, yes, the dog, needs to go outside, so we’ll be outside, okay?” Alistair babbled. In the brief glimpse she got of him before he was bolting out of the room, she saw that he was beet red. Poor man.

The pirate couldn’t stifle the giggle that erupted at this turn of events. “Shit, Zevran, you are hanging with quite a straight-laced crowd these days. Has your friend ever gotten laid?”

“Hey, watch how you talk about Alistair!” To Isabela’s surprise, the silent Kallian stepped between her and Zevran, ears flattening in anger, cheeks flushed for reasons completely different than her colleague.

“What is he to you?” she challenged, quirking an eyebrow.

“My friend!” she asserted. “We have fought for our lives side by side for a long time now, and I will not let you disrespect him by taking that tone.”

Isabela simply smiled and folded her arms behind her head, pushing her generous bust forward. “Calm down, darling, I apologize. Let’s say I haven’t met many like him in my travels, that’s all.”

Zevran cleared his throat, reminding the women of his presence. “Apologies, I have failed to properly introduce the two of you. Kallian, this is Isabela, Queen of the Eastern Seas and the sharpest blade in Llomeryn. You will find no better duelist to teach you, of that I can assure you.” At his words, Isabela gave a mock salute. Kallian just rolled her eyes. “Isabela, the charming woman before you is Kallian, the Warden. Unlike you, no pretentious titles or anything, she just kills a lot of darkspawn and looks damn good while doing it.”

“Charmed.” Isabela held out her hand, which Kallian reluctantly shook. “And I like your fire. You seem to be a very strong woman, which I can respect. We are too few in the world. Normally this would be the part where I break out the cards and we get to know each other over some Wicked Grace, but perhaps this time we can skip the formalities. You are, after all, a friend of Zevran.”

“So you’ll teach me?”

Isabela smirked. “I could. Or, first, we could unwind a bit. I have a room here, and the bed has plenty of space for three. I don’t think your friend will mind if the rest of us have a quick tumble, seeing as the dog will keep him company. What do you say?”

“Are you…serious?” Kallian stared in horror. Assuming she wanted to have sex with a complete stranger was insulting enough, but assuming she would want to share Zevran with a complete stranger, even if he knew her, was even worse.

“Of course, sweetness. Why wouldn’t I be? You are a lovely woman, one that intrigues me. Unless it is sleeping with your comrade that you are more concerned about?”

Before Kallian could get a word in, Zevran spoke for her. She wished he didn’t. “Oh, that’s no issue, if you get my meaning.” Isabela nodded in understanding, still looking intently at the Warden. “She’s probably shy because she’s never been with a woman before.”

“Ah, I can assure you that we will go slow and make it good for you. You’ve been with Zevran, you know firsthand how masterful he is in his instruction. I’m no slouch either, for that matter.”

“My Warden, the pleasure we could give you would be beyond what you could imagine. This is quite the opportunity…”

And that was all she could take, Zevran suggesting she get on board with a three-some that included what was clearly a past lover. Zevran not being at all bothered with the idea of her and someone else while he watched. “Neither of us are sleeping with you!” she blurted, squeezing her eyes shut.

Zevran always had a witty remark to any situation, no matter how dire, but this rendered him speechless. Isabela filled that gap. “You speak for both of you? How curious…”

“Kallian?” His voice was filled with confusion, but she couldn’t bear to look. Instead, she turned away and ran from the room much like Alistair had done. The difference was, she had burst into tears. Everyone in the room was probably staring at her as she ran, but she didn’t care. All she could think about was getting out of there.

Throwing open the door to The Pearl, she sprinted towards the docks. Maybe she would just throw herself off and let the ocean take her. Screw the Blight! But Kallian had always had that nagging sense of responsibility, so instead, she found a deserted corner of the dock and crawled behind some empty shipping crates. She then preceded to curl into a tight ball and cry, letting her voluminous mane of curly chestnut hair cover her face so no one would see.

She hadn’t paid attention to how long she had been sitting like this, weeping like a heart-sick teenager, when a familiar voice came from behind her. “Pardon me, is this corner taken?”

With a sniffle, she slowly raised her head just enough to notice those boots of fine Antivan leather. Of course she recognized them, she’d been the one to give them to him. “No,” she answered weakly.

That was apparently enough to satisfy him, because he crawled over the box and plopped down beside her. She felt his long fingers comb the hair back out of her face. “I must admit, my dear, even I, the master of all witty retorts, haven’t got a good one for this. Instead, I must apologize for putting you in that position. I didn’t realize-”

“I didn’t know it would be like this!” she insisted, still trembling and unable to look at him as more tears trickled down her cheeks. “I thought it would be okay. You’ve warned me about your love life, and I still agreed to our encounters. I knew I’d have to share you, but now that that day has come…I can’t!” A fresh wave of tears streamed from her eyes as she choked on a sob. “I have no business stopping you from sleeping with that Isabela woman, but honestly Zevran, if you do, I can’t keep up whatever relationship it is we have. I’m sorry for causing you so many problems.”

“Kallian, look at me.” His voice was serious, and sounded so foreign coming from him. It piqued her curiosity enough to get her to raise her head further and bashfully turn to him. How ugly she must look, eyes red and eyelids puffy from crying, hair flying every-which-way, pale skin blotchy. Why would he sleep with someone like her when he could bed an exotic beauty like Isabela?

Her heart skipped a beat when he let his thumb wipe away the tears. Zevran was flirty, filled with innuendos, but suddenly he was nothing but tender and gentle. “I would never have spoken that way or made those suggestions if I knew you were even vaguely on the fence about an open relationship. Why did you agree to it if you are reacting so strongly against it now?”

She searched his brown eyes and saw only pure confusion. He truly hadn’t meant to cause this, she believed that wholeheartedly. He deserved the truth, and she may as well tell it seeing as their relationship was probably over anyhow. “Did you know I was almost a married woman?”

Zevran blinked in surprise. “That…was not mentioned, no.”

She swallowed. “I was standing at the altar, in fact. Then the Arl’s son kidnapped me, and my fiancée was killed trying to rescue me even as I fought my way out.” She bowed her head. “It’s silly, because I’d only known him for a few moments, but in that time I got my hopes up that we would be happy together. He was sweet, and he obviously wasn’t willing to sit back and let harm befall me. It…hit me harder than I ever thought it would when I watched him get cut down before my very eyes, and even though I never really knew him, I still keep the wedding ring he carried even as he fought.” With trembling fingers, she reached into her pocket and pulled out a band of metal. It was no expensive thing, but that hardly mattered. “I didn’t want to go through that again.”

“Kallian,” he murmured, reaching out and folding her hand around the ring. “I’m sorry.”

“Well, anyhow, when you started flirting with me, I figured hey, may as well not die a virgin, right?” She faked a smile as she roughly wiped her eyes. “But you could get killed, and I could get killed, and the odds of both of us living were not great, so why get involved, you know? Just enjoy taking what we could get in the time that we had. Apparently I can’t follow my own plan though. Now I’ve lost it all because I couldn’t control myself back there.” She abruptly pocketed the ring once more, as if the conversation were over.

“Why do you say that?”

“I know you just want something casual. I mean, you flirt with everyone, it’s not like you enjoy being tied down to one person. Even if you were, why get stuck with me, who can’t even please you in bed?” She stared at the wooden pier below her, picking at the loose splinters. “And now I know I can’t live like that even when I try, so why even put you through this?”

There was a long silence. She wondered what he was thinking, if he was trying to find the right words to let her down gently. “First of all, I refute your claim about being inadequate in bed, but that is a conversation for another day,” he finally started. “More importantly, you won’t believe me when I tell you this, but I was really serious about a girl. Well, a girl and a guy. We were kind of a package deal, really. Of course, that’s a really stupid thing to do when you are all assassins.”

She turned her gaze upwards and stared at him. “You…you were?”

“Need I tell you that ended horribly? I’d…rather not go into detail right now, if you wouldn’t mind.”

“I understand.” She wanted to reach out and take his hand, offer him a reassuring squeeze, but that may still be crossing a line they hadn’t established.

“The point is, I keep it casual for the same reasons as you. But it seems a bit silly, both of us pretending we don’t want more because the idea scares us. We are supposed to be fearless, aren’t we?”

“Zevran?” She licked her dry lips nervously, hoping she hadn’t misinterpreted what he had just said.

“We’ll have to figure out what this is, or what we want it to be, of course, but in the meantime, I won’t sleep with Isabela or anyone else. I don’t enjoy seeing you cry, My Warden. On the contrary, I’d much prefer to make you smile. It has quickly become more precious to me than even the bottle of Antivan Brandy you gifted.”

She couldn’t believe her ears. “You won’t? Because of me?”

He gave a deep chuckle at the sight of her shocked expression and pressed a warm kiss to her sweaty forehead. “If you can be brave enough to be honest with yourself, so can I. I have sworn to follow your lead, after all.”

He didn’t expect how forcefully she’d fling her arms around him, nearly knocking him over. “Zevran, thank you! I promise I’ll work hard to learn how to please you so you don’t miss those other women…”

This time he used his kiss to cut off her promises, threading his fingers in the tangles of her hair and holding it for a good long time. “Mi amore, just be yourself. That is what makes you more than any other partner I’ve ever had, do you understand?”

She blushed, giving a shy but overjoyed smile. “Okay.”

It was an image to burn into his brain, to be certain. How lovely she looked, so honest and free and happy. It almost made him forget his slip of the tongue. Oh, he had to be more careful. This was a step forward he’d secretly wished for, but he was getting too far ahead of himself. “We should go find Alistair and the dog, don’t you think? He’s probably very lost and very confused by now.”

Kallian laughed. “I feel so bad that I brought him along. I think I owe him the little stone warrior statue I’ve been saving.”

“That might be a good idea.” Zevran rose, and offered his hand to Kallian, hoisting her up as well. “Shall we?”

Finally, she took his hand as she had so wanted to do for the last few weeks. “We shall.”


End file.
